Gar was bored. Bored and hungry. She had brought her pack into Fallow for the twenty nights for a much needed break from The North Ocean. They had made a good score stealing crates from the ships leaving Vanhoover. They would stay in town for the festival, then spend a week or two in Luna Bay. If too many crates went missing, the ponies started to get suspicious and hired more guards.

That was the cost of doing business her way. The Alpha before her, Mok, had once stolen an entire ship. Left the ponies on board in a rowboat. After that, it had been more than a year before the ships started to let their guard down. Before that happened Gar had challenged Mok for control of the pack. When Mok went to join the sky mother, Gar her pack had started stealing only a few crates off of ships. It made them enough that she remained alpha but not so much that it couldn't have been lost due to mis-shipping or a rogue wave.

Her pack had set up their camp to the west of the village. As hospitable as the local moose were when it came to opening their village to outsiders for the festival, they did have their limits. The wolves would enjoy the festival the same as everyone else up until the tenth day, then they would have their own feast. While the thestrals called it the moon and thought it was moved by the night princess, the wolves knew that the sky mother was alive. and so on the tenth day of the festivities they had a feast of raw meat to celebrate her.

So here they sat, watching the annual re-telling of the history of the night kingdom. Gar had heard the same old stories since she was a pup and didn't expect much. The pack had roared with laughter when a blue moose calf flew out over the stage on a wire. Nan, a younger wolf in her pack, laughed so hard he fell off the bleachers. he wandered back a few minutes later with a bit of a limp. Beyond that, Gar spent most of the early performance hoping a vendor would wander through the audience with some food, but no such luck. She tried to pay more attention to the play and less to her growling stomach.

"... They discovered the heart of darkness"

The mention of that cursed old relic brought silence to the crowd. Even generations later it was something creatures didn't talk about without good reason. One of the pups on the stage held up a prop of the black crystal and even Gar felt a bit of nervousness. The old wolf on the stage continued the story.

"The heart was made of a black crystal unlike anything the wolves had seen before and it gave of a feeling of worry to all who saw it. The wolves didn't know what to make of it, so they decided to take it to the leaders of the three groups in capital. they had kept the heart wrapped in cloth for the journey, but when they arrived in Brass Tower the city guards asked to see what they were carrying."

The pups were joined on stage by two adult thestrals dressed in brass armor, though still rearing the fake pegasus wings from earlier.

"It was there that the heart of darkness was exposed to the sun for the first time in what could have bean millions of years. And as soon as the sunlight touched it, a thick fog grew from the heart. The fog grew and grew until it covered everything within The Fangs."

fog began to billow from behind the curtains at the sides of the stage as the pups and thestrals gave worried looks.

"As the day went on, the fog didn't go away, and it was there the next day as well. all of the towns and villages were cloaked in the thick fog, but that wasn't the worst of it. Creatures all over the area began to report having terrible nightmares but could never remember what they were about."

The stage, now almost completely hidden in fog echoed with the screams of various actors.

"This went on for weeks, and it wasn't only The Fangs that were reporting nightmares, there were complaints from as far away as the Crystal Empire and Vanhoover. "

The fog on stage began to clear in order to tell the next part of the story. A filly near the front loudly questioned why the fog was going away and was answered with a wave of shh.

"This story happened long before the rise of the princess, and Equestria was not the nation it is today. This meant that two different groups arrived to try and solve the problem. One of these was the great order of the sun, a group of powerful unicorns who sent an army from what is now Canterlot."

Three moose cows walked onto a now empty stage. they were a little older than the calves from the early story and were all painted white with golden prop armor emblazoned with the image of the sun and fake unicorn horns. Strangely, the cow in the middle was in a mesh, wheeled cage being pushed by the other two.

The filly from before managed to get out, "Why is she in a" ,before a barrage of half eaten food and cups began to clatter against the cage. The debris came mostly from the wolf packs, along with a string of boos and vulgarity, the nicest of these being "sun witch"

The old wolf stepped closer to the center of the stage. "Please, there are young ones in the audience" he said.

Gar used a stern look and a few quick punches to bring her pack under control. She flashed a disdained look at Lop, the other pack leader, as an urge to do the same.

With the crowd back under control, the storyteller continued.

"The second group were the high mages, led by Clover the Clever, who surprisingly sent only a single sorceress to look into the problem"

The clearly unhappy cows on the stage were now joined by a single equine figure. She wore dark blue pointed hat with a wide brim and a cloak of the same color, both embroidered with small white stars. With the hat and the cloak it was impossible to make out anything but her hooves, which were a slightly lighter blue than her clothing. Something about the color felt familiar to Gar, but she quickly dismissed the idea.

"The sorceress arrived first at The Dour Gate. She spoke to the guards."

The sorceress now stepped forward and spoke in a voice that was like gravel in honey. As though a beautiful singer had screamed until her voice gave out the day before, still a beautiful voice but with a strange rasp to it.

"I've come on behalf of the high mages to help solve the problem of the nightmare mist, I wish to speak to your leaders so we might help end this problem together."

Her color was a tip off, but that was a voice Gar would never forget as long as she lived.

Author's Note

Chapter 3.
In the process of writing this I realized that this story is going to be longer than originally planned. Writing the first chapter I thought I would have it finished in three acts. At this point it looks like 5.
But there is a plan. and since I'm heading to Canada in a week I wan't to have it finished before I leave.
As always, questions, comments and critiques are appreciated.